Coastal Commission vs. SpaceX: Round 2

Politico

21 hours ago

With help from Camille von Kaenel
ROCKET REMATCH: The California Coastal Commission is going for another round with Elon Musk's space company.
U.S. Space Force officials will be back in front of the commission next Thursday with a proposal to double SpaceX's rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base from 50 to 95 per year — and agency staff is recommending commissioners reject it.
'The simple fact remains that it is a privately owned company engaged in activities primarily for its own commercial business,' staff said in a report Friday. 'It is not a public federal agency or conducting its launches on behalf of the federal government.'
The vote promises to reopen a rift between Musk and the agency after the commission rejected Space Force's previous proposal to increase SpaceX launches from 36 to 50, but cited Musk's politics and support for President Donald Trump in doing so.
The commission drew a lawsuit from Musk — and a rebuke from Gov. Gavin Newsom at the time.
'I'm with Elon,' Newsom said in October after Musk sued the commission for political bias. 'You can't bring up that explicit level of politics.'
The fight is flying further under the radar this time around, though. Where a bipartisan group of pro-space state and federal lawmakers spoke up for SpaceX ahead of October's vote — and environmentalists chimed in on behalf of nearby residents and wildlife they argued would be disturbed by the launches' sonic booms — that type of lobbying hasn't materialized.
Neither Newsom's office nor SpaceX responded to a request for comment. Space Launch Delta 30 Commander Col. James T. Horne III, who oversees Vandenberg and Western operations, said in a statement that the commission staff recommendation doesn't change the military's 'unwavering commitment to preserving the California coastline' and that its partnership with SpaceX helps maintain 'its technological edge and strategic advantage over competitors.'
The relative quiet comes amid a shifted political landscape, after Trump returned to power and Republicans swept Congress on a message of affordability and economic strength. Newsom and Democratic state lawmakers, faced with looming refinery closures and perpetually high building costs, are trying to boost in-state oil drilling and have already weakened environmental permitting for everything from wildfire fuel breaks to high-speed rail, putting environmentalists on the back foot.
Jennifer Savage, California policy associate director for the Surfrider Foundation, said environmental groups are in rapid response mode, which has 'taken energy away from other things that we normally would have perhaps had more capacity to deal with.'
'I do think there's a lot of political overwhelm happening on all fronts, and that has divided people's attention perhaps more than when this first came up,' Savage said.
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire have also shaken up the commission since last year, replacing members like former Chair Justin Cummings, former Vice Chair Paloma Aguirre and alternate Gretchen Newsom (no relation to Gavin Newsom), all of whom had bemoaned Musk's behavior.
And Newsom himself spent the early part of this year clipping the commission's wings, issuing several executive orders in the wake of the Los Angeles fires to suspend the Coastal Act — the 1976 law that established the commission — in an effort to fast-track rebuilding.
But there's also the reality that Space Force officials moved forward with the increase from 36 to 50 last year, even after the no vote, citing federal preemption and national security considerations.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.), one of the lawmakers who signed a bipartisan letter last year backing the launch increase, said the reality that the commission can't stop the military's plan means the issue has taken on less urgency.
'Now that the commission has proved its own irrelevance, maybe that same imperative doesn't exist,' said Kiley, who is pushing a bill that would limit state authority to review certain activities related to national security and post-disaster recovery and rebuilding. — AN
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MERCURY RISING: Los Angeles landlords and tenants, get your fans ready.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance Tuesday to require landlords in its unincorporated areas to keep indoor temperatures in all the rooms of rental units below 82 degrees, either by using passive cooling methods like blackout curtains or by installing air conditioners.
Chair Pro Tem and Supervisor Hilda L. Solis, who introduced the measure after three years of efforts to establish an indoor heat standard, called it a 'life-saving policy that prioritizes the health and dignity of renters' amid growing evidence that rising temperatures are triggering more heat illnesses and death. She said she hoped other cities in the region would follow suit.
She and her co-author, Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, agreed to partly carve out small landlords from the requirement amid pushback from the California Apartment Association and Supervisor Janice Hahn. Landlords who only own a few units will have until January 2032 to bring temperatures into check in every room of the unit; in the interim, they will have to keep only one room below 82 degrees.
The compromise partly responded to a RAND report that recommended that Los Angeles policymakers should focus first on cooling one room instead of the whole unit so as not to stress the grid with new air conditioners.
The ordinance takes effect in 30 days but won't be enforced until Jan. 1, 2027. — CvK
AI YI YI: Artificial intelligence could be the power sector's savior — if the industry plays its cards right, California policy editor Debra Kahn writes in her latest column.
Trump is canceling loan guarantees for wind-connected transmission lines and trying to block federal land from being used for wind power — but he's telling agencies to figure out how to build data centers on that same land. And those data centers need power.
AI and its attendant data centers are projected to unleash the U.S. electricity industry's first net growth in 20 years. They could solve the industry's longstanding problem of spreading its growing costs across a shrinking pool of customers, if it can build fast enough to meet the demand.
'The size and the scale of what we're seeing now is unlike anything we've ever seen,' Pacific Gas & Electric Co. executive Mike Medeiros said, after PG&E got approval for a new rate structure to speed up connecting data centers to the grid. 'People will tell you — they probably haven't seen load growth like this since World War II.' — DK
WHAT CANCELED PROGRAM?: The Trump administration is claiming it didn't really cancel a FEMA grant that funds disaster preparation and mitigation, four months after it shuttered the program.
FEMA acting Administrator David Richardson wrote in a July 25 court declaration that 'despite FEMA's public announcements,' the agency actually didn't end the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, of which California is one of the largest beneficiaries.
The document startled state and local officials and created new uncertainty about the administration's plans for helping communities with hurricanes, floods and other disasters, Thomas Frank reports for POLITICO's E&E News.
Attorney General Rob Bonta joined 19 other AGs in a lawsuit last month challenging the program cancellation, arguing that the Trump administration violated congressional guidance to prioritize mitigation efforts and defied government spending authority by refusing to reallocate funds dedicated for BRIC to other programs. — AN
CASTING SHADE: The Trump administration is making plans to cancel a $7 billion program funding solar projects in low-income communities across the country, people familiar with the agency's plan told POLITICO's Zack Colman, Alex Guillén and Kelsey Tamborrino on Tuesday.
The termination letters are being drafted this week and could go out within days, according to a former EPA official familiar with the agency's plan granted anonymity to speak ahead of the release of the letters.
The Solar for All program awarded money to state agencies, localities or nonprofit groups in almost every state to be used for residential rooftop panels, community solar developments or storage technologies — including $250 million to California state energy agencies that has yet to be distributed.
Kym Meyer, litigation director at the Southern Environmental Law Center, signaled the group would pursue legal action if the administration terminates the grants.
— The shipping company that delivers most of Hawaii's cars has stopped sending electric vehicles to the state because of the risk of battery fires.
— Purple states are piling onto the lawsuit challenging Trump's freezing of federal electric vehicle funding.
— A heat wave is coming to California this week, intensifying the wildfires already burning and raising the risk of more blazes.